It’s a long story why, but I’m not able to play games at night right now. As such, I’m getting a lot of handheld gaming in and I’ve had plenty of reading time. On Sunday, the eldest was playing at a friend’s house, and while the youngest napped, I thought it would be the perfect time to finally finish Victory Road and beat the Elite Four. Victory Road was a pain in the ass, I can’t lie there, but nothing prepared me for the Elite Four.
Pokemon Yellow has that sharp spike in difficulty at the very end, something that most RPGs of this time period suffer from. It was some developer’s way of thinking it would be “fun” to suddenly force grinding upon players. Oh, did you get through the entire game with little difficulty? Well, prepare to be punished. Come back when you’ve earned 20 more levels. Yeah, no, that’s not fun, and that’s exactly why I dropped Final Fantasy III (Japanese, not American). Unlike FFIII, I did not do all of the side quests in Pokemon Yellow. There were two I skipped, the hunts for legendary Pokemon Articuno and Zapdos. In hindsight, I should have gone after Zapdos. I was overly confident in Pikachu, and that was a mistake.
My second mistake was not buying enough Revives at Indigo Plateau. I limped through my battles with the Elite Four, surviving the final one with only Blastoise, Sandslash, Venusaur, and Moltres. But like the Inquisition, I did not expect Gary to swoop in at the end for a fifth battle with no break or time to heal. I had never lost to Gary before, and yes, it would hurt my pride if I lost to him now. It would doubly suck if I had to go through the Elite Four all over again. I thought I was super prepared for the water types with the first of the Elite Four, but her Lapras destroyed Pikachu in a hurry. I did beat Gary the first try, and only Blastoise and Sandslash were still alive, although barely.
A win is a win, right? Good God I’m glad I’m done with that game. So much about it was great, especially the story behind the ghosts at Pokemon Tower, but that’s one game I will not play again. It’s really hard to go back to those old games. I admit we’re spoiled now with the amount of hand holding, and you know what? I’m fine with it. Perfectly fine.
One thing I will say about that experience though is I’m super eager to see how much has evolved since these first games! I really wanted to rush out and buy Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, but I remembered I have other games on my 3DS I should get through first, like the Phoenix Wright games I bought during a PW sale. That first PW game? Wow it is ROUGH. The drawings are so bad, but it’s still so much fun.
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